No fewer than three people were killed and 10,500 more displaced after Cyclone Gabrielle hit New Zealand even as military helicopters winched stranded storm survivors to safety.
The disaster has severed roads, collapsed houses, and cut power across a swathe of New Zealand’s North Island: home to more than three-quarters of the country’s five million residents.
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The human toll continues to grow. Emergency Management Minister Kieran McAnulty said Wednesday that three bodies had now been recovered from storm-hit areas.
They included a woman killed when her house was crushed by a landslip in Hawke’s Bay and a victim believed to be a volunteer firefighter trapped by a collapsing home.
About 10,500 people have been displaced and 140,000 are still without power, according to McAnulty.
He hailed the ‘phenomenal’ effort of rescue workers and military personnel who plucked ‘roughly 300 people from rooftops’ in Hawke’s Bay — a sprawling expanse of lush farmland, rugged mountains, and hard-to-reach towns.
He said a group of 60 people had been rescued from one large building marooned by floodwaters.
Aerial images showed a once bucolic landscape riven with torrents of floodwater, latticed with crumbling roads and scarred by massive landslides.
‘There’s still gaps in our knowledge. Some areas haven’t had communications for a couple of days and we know there’s a shortage of food and water,’ McAnulty told radio station Newstalk ZB.
New Zealand faces a months-long effort to fix damaged roads, homes, and bridges.
Authorities on Tuesday announced a national state of emergency for only the third time in the country’s history, after the 2019 Christchurch attacks and the Covid-19 pandemic.
‘This is a significant disaster which is going to take many weeks for those areas affected to recover,” said McAnulty. “We are in this for the long haul.’
Cyclone Gabrielle formed off the northeastern coast of Australia in the Coral Sea on February 8, before barrelling across the South Pacific.
It bore down on New Zealand’s northern coast on Sunday, bringing gusts of 140 kilometres (87 miles) an hour.